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Book Title: Catching the Light
Author: Joanna Horton
Genre: Literary Fiction (Mother‑Daughter, Art Colony, Slow‑Burn Drama)
Why You’ll Love This
Catching the Light follows Sylvie, a single mother seeking creative renewal, and her teenage daughter Alice as they relocate to a rural artists’ colony. Joanna Horton interweaves present-day reflections with tense memories to explore love, grief, and fractured family bonds. It’s a beautifully rendered, emotionally immersive novel that holds readers in its lingering light.
Read If You Like
- Emily Bitto’s The Strays or Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch
- Character-driven literary fiction exploring motherhood and moral ambiguity
- Emotional, slow-burn narratives with rich, evocative prose
Author Insights & Interviews
Joanna Horton was born in the US, raised in New Zealand, and now lives in Brisbane. Her academic background (MA University of Chicago, PhD candidate UQ) lends precision and subtlety to her writing. She prefers writing in quiet solitude, drawing on character dynamics to drive her narratives
Add Catching the Light to your shelf today. This warm, thoughtful novel is perfect for "The Coastal Weekender" looking for layered, meaningful reading.
Blurb
Blurb
Water, sand, hills, sky: the painter was out at sea, looking towards the shore. Impossible to say whether he was coming in or going out.
When Sylvie, a single mother yearning for a creative spark, meets Michael, a renowned painter, she feels something she hasn’t felt in years. Impulsively she decides to uproot her life and move to Isaiah, an artists’ colony, with her teenage daughter, Alice.
To Sylvie, Isaiah seems to offer a second chance at the things she’s sacrificed—freedom, love and art—but her relationship with Michael begins to affect the closeness she once had with her daughter. Without her mother’s knowledge, Alice engages in an act of teenage defiance that will shape both their lives.
Years later, Alice, a PhD student, is sought out by Caroline, an art historian researching Michael for a retrospective of his work. As their conversations tease out long-buried memories, Alice grapples with her past and Caroline’s hidden agenda.
Sometimes it’s all a matter of perspective.
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